1 Gmb Congress 2012
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
GMB CONGRESS 2012 ……………………. SIS. MARY TURNER MBE (President) (In the Chair) ……………………. Held in: The Brighton Centre, Brighton on: Sunday, 10th June 2012 (Congress) Monday, 11th June 2012 (Morning: Congress/Afternoon: Section Conferences) Tuesday, 12th June 2012 (Section Conferences) Wednesday, 13th June 2012 (Congress) and Thursday, 14th June 2012 (Congress) ……………………. PROCEEDINGS DAY FIVE (Thursday, 14th June 2012) …………………….. (Transcript prepared by: Marten Walsh Cherer Limited, 1st Floor, Quality House, 6-9 Quality Court, Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1HP. email: [email protected]) ……………………….. 1 FIFTH DAY‘S PROCEEDINGS THURSDAY 14TH JUNE 2012 MORNING SESSION (Congress assembled at 9.30 a.m.) THE PRESIDENT: Colleagues, will you start settling down, please, otherwise I will keep you here till 5 o‘clock. Settle down, please. I am calling Congress to order. Congress, before we start the official proceedings could I welcome Shami Chakrabarti to the platform. I will be introducing her later. Many of you know her or you may not know her but you have seen her. (Applause) Welcome. I have a couple of bits of shopping to do. Number 1 is the Messi T-shirt. As you know this is signed by him. You have a certificate to say it is the original. It is his Argentinean shirt so when he goes to the Falklands you can all wear it. (Laughter) We want bids in excess of £1,600. London is leading the way at the moment. There you are. It has a certificate to prove it is the real thing. When you want to sell it, you can buy your house. They say he is the greatest footballer in the world. It is a matter of opinion, isn‘t it, Paul Kenny, and Fulham! We had the bucket collection yesterday for Northern Ireland Children‘s Hospice and the Sunshine House for Terminally Ill Children and raised a total of £578.28, each charity therefore gets £289.14. Thank you for Midland & East Coast Region and North West & Irish Region, and I will tell the General Secretary later but we will double those amounts, round them up. (Applause) We have a birthday: I believe it is Andy Newman‘s birthday, from Wiltshire & Swindon. (Applause) We are not sure whether he is 21. He has not put his age on here. Happy Birthday, Andy. Happy Birthday to you and thanks for the good work you have been doing down there. Any more, Mary? Another birthday, oh dear, Tom Carr-Pollock, I am glad I got that word right. It says here it is a man! 40 years young today. Happy Birthday, Tom. (Applause) Somebody will not be able to read their resolutions when they get up here. Because of either the whisky or the gin, or the vodka, I am not sure, they left their glasses last night in the London Region do. All going to SpecSavers. If not claimed I will put them back in the hotel. I am like the pigeon carrier. I cannot hear any bids for that shirt yet. Before moving on we will draw three delegates‘ questionnaires, each win a signed bottle of GMB whisky. Can I ask Shami if she will draw it for us, please? Bill Heley from Midland & East Coast Region, Pete Murphy, Southern, and the third one is Neil Evans, South Western Region. Are you telling me it is all men who filled in those forms? Well done. Thank you. Thank you, Shami. 2 Okay, colleagues, I now move on and this morning and I will take the two remaining Social Policy Motions, 201 and 202, after the Rights at Work debates. I now ask for the movers of Emergency Motion 3, Oppose New Surveillance Plans, the Yorkshire Region to move. OPPOSE NEW SURVEILLANCE PLANS EMERGENCY MOTION 3 OPPOSE NEW SURVEILLANCE PLANS This Congress opposes the government plans announced in April to increase surveillance of emails, text, phone calls, internet use and social media by the security services. The government has said the aim of these measures is to target terrorism and organised crime. However, such measures have historically been used not against terrorists and gangsters, but against anyone the state has decided is the enemy. In the recent past, these have included Labour politicians, trade unionists and peace campaigners. At Congress 2009 in opposing the Communications Data Bill, the CEC stance was that if ‘the provisions in the Bill are put forward in future, the CEC would need to review them.’ The need for review has arrived. Congress calls on the CEC to review the government plans and, if necessary, to vigorously oppose them. PARKGATE YORKSHIRE & NORTH DERBYSHIRE REGION (Carried) BRO. I. KEMP (Yorkshire & North Derbyshire Region): President, Congress, in April, and confirmed this morning, there was an announcement that there will be an increase in surveillance of electronic communications and access to the internet. This is in order to aid the wars against terrorism and organised crime. While we must try to always be one step in front of the bad guys, all too often the bad guys end up being us. We are always classified as the enemy within and before you start thinking this is a bit of a conspiracy theory, just think back to the 1970s when it was seriously considered by politicians of the right and a number of Army officers and ex-Army officers and businessmen to organise a coup against the Labour government of Harold Wilson. At every Congress I seem to quote a Marx maxim about history repeating and this year is no exception so let‘s just accept that I have said it. Back in 2009 Congress passed a motion opposing the Communications Data Bill with a qualification that there is a balance between defending civil liberties and the need to protect the public. Further, if the proposals were to be put forward at a later date, the CEC would need to review them to reach a decision on the balance. Comrades, we have now reached that later date. Now, without wishing to pre-empt the outcome of such a review, we need to prepare to fight the government giving the security services the same powers as 3 their counterparts in China, Iran, and North Korea, such paragons of liberty and democracy. Whether this fight means we lobby parliament or, even better, forward junk email to David Cameron and Theresa May, I think that is probably the best idea, so let‘s just see how GCHQ copes with that. Congress, empower the CEC now. I move Emergency Motion 3. THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Seconder. Hi, Pam. SIS. P. ROSS (Yorkshire & North Derbyshire Region): It is a good thing we live in this digital electronic age because I was sent an email telling me about a proposal to jam Theresa May‘s email inbox on 1st May and I joined in on Facebook with some thousands of others. Every email we sent, every email we forwarded, especially the spam, we forwarded to half a dozen email addresses. One of the people taking part in this Facebook campaign then got in touch with the office and asked quite innocently some question and the staff extremely harassed were saying they did not know what on earth had happened but they were absolutely inundated with emails and just did not know how to cope. Come on, folks, let‘s stop this nonsense. Why on earth should they want to see all our emails; are they really that exciting? (Applause) THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Pam. Good to see you. Okay, anyone wish to oppose? No? I put it to the vote. All those in favour please show. Anyone against? That is carried. Emergency Motion 3 was CARRIED. THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. We now move to the next business. It gives me great pleasure to welcome Shami Chakrabarti to our Congress. Shami is a barrister by background and has worked for the Home Office. She has been the Director of Liberty for the past nine years and Liberty has led the way in promoting civil liberties and protecting human rights. She has been invited to be an independent assessor advising on the Leveson Inquiry. I call Shami to address Congress, and welcome. (Applause) SHAMI CHAKRABARTI, DIRECTOR OF LIBERTY, ADDRESS TO CONGRESS SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: Thank you very much, Congress. I cannot tell you what an honour it is to be here and particularly to have the opportunity to follow the unanimous passing of that motion. Sometimes when you do this work it can be disheartening and you can think that people do not care, that people have become complacent about their precious rights and freedoms. To see you all with your hands in the air voting against this terrible, terrible policy of blanket surveillance of the entire population of this country was really moving. As you have heard, I am the Director of Liberty, which is the National Council for Civil Liberties. I now also have been invited to be an assessor on Leveson LJ‘s Inquiry but I was also once called by The Sun newspaper the most dangerous woman in Britain. (Applause) That should just reassure you that Britain cannot be that dangerous a place, can it? Look, they have even had to shorten the podium for me. 4 This is as dangerous as it gets! Sleep very safely in your beds tonight and be reassured. I am here to talk about Liberty NCCL that was founded in 1934: 1934, so long ago, so completely different, was it not, from 2012? No Facebook then, DNA not discovered, no reality TV, a completely different universe: well, in a way, yes; in a way, no.